Thursday, 26 September 2013

I've been watching the political party
conference season with interest this year and a couple of things have
leapt out at me from the start. The first is that the electioneering for
May 2015 has begun and secondly is the shift in the political
positioning of the main parties.

Public perception of the Liberal
Democrats is at a low, the dash to power has resulted in a
'Conservative Lite' feel, pushing the party right of central and into
capitalist territory that certainly I find uncomfortable. But this week has
also seen the remnants of 'New Labour' clothing thrown off to reveal
'New Old-style Labour' with a big jump to the left. The conservatives
have a problem looming, being squeezed left by the rise of UKIP but
unwilling to fully embrace the Lib Dem approach
means they are going to find the ground disappearing from under their
feet at the next election. It made me think about that big centrist
space opening up, and since politics, like nature, abhors a vacuum
what will fill that space? Certainly the centre-left ground prior to
the emergence of the Liberal Democrats was held by the Social
Democrat Party, could we see the emergence of a new social democratic
(as apposed to social capitalist) party between now and 2015?